


let me bear your pain

by notdeadyet



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU, i've literally had this in progress for a year now, welcome to hell - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 14:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14166912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notdeadyet/pseuds/notdeadyet
Summary: The day that Jake's soulmate was shot was the worst day of his life thus far.





	let me bear your pain

**Author's Note:**

> So here is (another) soulmate au!! In this one because I'm the author and I get to decide how this works, one of the soulmates can feel the pain of the other. Soulmates are drawn to each other, but this is an unfortunate side effect. Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> ALSO: I didn't put graphic descriptions of violence in the archive warnings, but there is a scene involving a character being shot (guess who)

The day that Jake’s soulmate was shot was the worst day of his life thus far.

A little bit because of the absolute and unbearable pain he felt in his abdomen where the bullet punctured, but it was mostly to do with the fact that his partner, his best friend, the person he had been low-key in love with for an inappropriate amount of time, staggered backwards and collapsed on the concrete floor at the exact second Jake’s vision went burry with a phantom bullet wound. 

He thought it was bad when he doubled over at his desk ten years earlier in borderline agony as he felt someone else’s bones break and skin puncture. But this was worse. This was worse because he knew who his soulmate was now. It was worse because he was right fucking there and couldn’t do anything to stop it. It was worse because now everyone was going to know, including Amy, and there was no way Jake was going to avoid that. Jake was always slightly bitter that he was the one that had to feel the pain of the pair, and it was times like this, when he could literally feel how much blinding pain Amy was in, tore him apart. 

Dropping to his knees, Jake tried to make his way over to Amy as the pain in his abdomen throbbed, right below where the bulletproof vest stopped. She was still so far away, and Jake could way too clearly see the blood pooling around her. Jake attempted to call out, shout for help, but all that came out was a garbled moan from the back of his throat.

“Officers down! I repeat, Peralta and Santiago down!” Jake recognized Rosa’s voice behind him and was dimly aware of Charles shouting something far away. Terry reached Amy first, pulled her shirt up and carefully pressing down on the wound while talking into the radios.

“Jake! Jake stop moving.” Rosa said angrily, crouching in front of him and trying to push him down. 

“’S not me.” Jake said, gaining more energy as the pain started to dim. “Amy’s hurt, not me.”

“The Sarge has Amy, just stay still.” Rosa said, not moving.

“No, no, Rosa, I’m not hurt. It’s not me.” Jake’s voice was stronger, and he managed to roll up his shirt to show no wound. Rosa looked confused, and Jake didn’t blame her. It’s not like anyone suspected that he and Amy were soulmates. Most people didn’t get hurt often enough to even remember that one-sided aspects of soulmates was even relevant. It was more common for people to find their soulmate after their first kiss, because, in the end, soulmates were drawn to each other. “I’m not hurt, Rosa.”

Realization dawned on Rosa’s face slowly. Behind her, paramedics were circling Amy, carefully placing her on a gurney. A few broke off to approach Jake and Rosa, but Rosa waved them off as Jake whispered Amy’s name rather deliriously under his breath like a mantra. Jake tried to stand and allowed Rosa to help him up, the two of them watching the ambulance rush out of the parking lot. 

“I need to get to the hospital.” Jake said, looking wildly around for a car.

“Jake? I thought you were down, I thought you were hurt.” Jake ignored Terry and shook himself out of Rosa’s grasp to make his way over to the nearest cruiser. 

He could feel more than hear the two of them following him, and he allowed Rosa to push him into the passenger seat while she climbed into the driver’s side. They were silent the whole time, Jake feeling like he was literally going to die, right there in the passenger seat of a police cruiser, and Rosa speeding through dense New York traffic. By the time they reached the ER, Jake’s pain had ebbed enough that he could sprint through the halls and reach the front desk in record time, Rosa hot on his heels.

“Amy… Santiago.” Jake said, gasping for breath. The receptionist looked terrified, whether of Rosa’s glare or Jake’s panic, Jake wasn’t sure, but either way she pulled up the ER information in record time.

“She’s in emergency surgery right now. The waiting room just down that hall.”

-

Rosa watched him carefully and Jake stared at his phone screen where she knew a selfie of him and Amy was showing. The rest of the squad came in minutes after the two of the arrived, and Jake was silent the whole time. It was absolutely unnerving. 

Of course, Rosa should have seen it coming. Not the bullet, but Jake’s reaction to it all. She had known, for years now, that Jake was in to Amy. Rosa wasn’t sure how she had never assumed that they were soulmates. It may not have been as obvious, but Rosa knew, at some level, that Amy was into Jake, too. 

“What happened with Peralta earlier?” Terry muttered to Rosa when she led the squad to the waiting room. “He was on the ground and you called him in.” Sitting beside Terry in the scratchy waiting room chairs, she looked around for anyone listening in before leaning in.

“He fell over because Amy got hurt.”

It took Terry less time than it took Rosa to figure out what that meant. “Damn.” He said in a low whistle. “Do you think…”

“I don’t think Amy knows.”

“Damn.” Terry repeated, and the two of them watched as Jake sat, unmoving, still staring at the phone screen, his face pale. 

It was hours later when the doctor finally arrived. “Amy Santiago?” Jake shot out of his chair and stared at the doctor while the rest of the waiting room fell silent, desperate for news. Clearing his throat, the doctor looked down at his clipboard. Rosa’s heart had stopped beating, and no one in the room was drawing breath. Shots to the abdomen were impossible to predict, and the doctor’s face was perfectly blank.

“We managed to retrieve the bullet, but there was a great deal of damage done to her soft tissue. No vital organs were greatly harmed aside from some damage to the small intestine that we were able to mitigate upon her arrival. She lost a great deal of blood and will be in a medically induced coma until her healing has progressed enough. We are still closely monitoring her and giving transfusions as required, so it is not possible to see her yet. However, she is expected to make enough of a recovery to go home within the week, and hopefully gain consciousness in a couple days or so.” The doctor paused. “She was very lucky.”

At that, it seemed like Jake’s knees just gave out underneath him. Rosa managed to catch him as he fell, and she pretended not to see the tears gathering in his eyes and dripping down his chin. The entire room felt lighter. Charles murmured what looked like “oh, thank god,” under his breath, and Gina came over to squeeze Jake’s hand, whispered “She’s going to be alright,” into his ear. Terry was smiling and Captain Holt looked more relieved that Rosa had ever seen.

An hour later, when most of the squad felt comfortable enough to doze in the rough waiting chairs, and Terry was talking to Sharon in a hushed voice on the phone, Rosa sat back down beside Jake.

“I took this one after we finished our first case.” Jake passed Rosa his phone, and a photo of Jake and Amy was on the screen, Amy looking deeply annoyed with a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and Jake grinning, his arm thrown around her shoulder as he took the photo. “And this one,” Jake tapped the phone and pulled one of the most recent photos, “Was from a case last week.” In that one, it was clear that Amy was laughing as Jake made a face at the camera, though this time Amy’s chin was grazing his shoulder and Jake was gripping her forearm across his chest as she was almost hugging him from behind, and Rosa could see that they were on the stairs leading up to the precinct. 

Rosa wasn’t sure what to say, so instead she passed the phone back wordlessly. They were quiet for awhile, Jake staring at the photo and Rosa watching him carefully.

“How long have you known?” She finally asked. 

Jake didn’t have to ask what she was referring to. “She was at the nine-nine for about two years, I think? I was at home eating a sandwich when my ankle suddenly hurt like hell, and Terry called like five minutes later to tell me he needed help bringing in a perp because Amy broke her ankle. I looked up her medical records and found out she was in the hospital a few years earlier when she fell out a window and broke a lot of bones around the same time my soulmate got hurt pretty bad.” Jake sighed. “I tired to ignore it, because she didn’t really like me at all, and I didn’t want to believe it. Then she started to get serious with Teddy and it was like my heart was ripped in half, you know?” Rosa didn’t know, but she remained silent. “But now Teddy’s out of the picture and I’ve been trying to ask her out for weeks but every time I get worried that I’m going to say something stupid like how completely in love with her I am.”

“You know she’s into you, too?” Rosa eventually asked.

Jake sighed. “Yeah, but I’m in love with her. I’m going to scare her off before anything else happens.”

“So, what, you’re going to be a coward about it forever?” Rosa was annoyed now, verging on angry. “You’re soulmates, for god’s sake. If anyone is going to fall in love with you, it will be her.”

“She’s right.” Jake and Rosa looked up to see Terry approach. “Sorry, got off the phone and overheard. You and Amy, you’re good for each other. You have to take that step, Jake, because Amy will spend the rest of her life overthinking the whole thing and doubting it all, especially if you don’t say anything after this. She’ll never think you’re soulmates if you stay silent after something that landed her in the hospital.”

-

One by one, the squad entered and exited Amy’s hospital room, each paler than the last. Rosa was the last one out, and she touched Jake’s shoulder. 

“Try not to freak out.” 

Nothing freaked Jake out more than that sentence, but he wasn’t going to tell Rosa that. Instead, he took a deep breath and nodded, staring at the closed door of Amy’s room as Rosa walked back to the waiting room. It had been about 12 hours, and most of the squad was getting ready to head back to work. Now that Amy was confirmed stable, the general sense of panic and fear was ebbing through most of the precinct, the only exception being Jake. And Jake was pretty sure he wouldn’t be fine until Amy was awake. 

Pushing the door open, the first thing he saw were the wire that connected to arms with veins much too prominent to be healthy. She looked bad. Awful. Her skin was pale and waxy, there were bags under her closed eyes. Jake staggered almost drunkenly to the chair beside the bed, collapsing into it and grabbing her cold hand. Her hair was matted slightly with dirt and blood, and her skin was wiped haphazardly, as though it was a second, fleeting thought. Jake’s jaw clenched at that. Amy’s hair was supposed to be soft and shiny, and she no longer smelled like green apples and printer ink. She smelled like anti-septic and rust and alley dirt. Amy still looked beautiful, of course. As far as Jake was concerned, it was physically impossible for her to not look absolutely stunning all the time. But she looked grimy and uncomfortable, and Amy deserved to be clean and warm and awake and smiling.

With that, Jake tightened his grip on her hand, rubbed his thumb over her cold knuckles, and drifted in and out of consciousness watching the heart monitors’ steady beeping.

Jake occasionally woke with a sudden surge of mild pain, which sucked. Amy should be getting better, not feeling like she was being lightly stabbed in the kidney every few hours. As time passed, the other detectives went back to work. Jake cashed in some of his sick days (and vacation days. And personal days), and from the sympathetic look the Captain gave him, Jake knew Holt had been made aware of this whole “soulmate” thing going on. Rosa was obviously keeping Charles in line, because it was clear that he was having trouble containing his glee. It was a bit annoying to look at his best friend and see a smile fighting its way onto his face – after all, Amy was hurt. No one should be happy – but it was just a little relieving to know that they were so easily accepted as a pair. Even Gina, despite her supposed dislike of Amy, seemed happy for Jake at least, and Jake had an inkling that she had a suspicion all along. 

It was two in the morning when Amy made a sound, changing the pace of her breathing and altering her heart rate ever so slightly. Jake shot up, immediately leaning over to stare at her face. Her eyelids slowly fluttered open, and Jake was too busy being relieved that she was finally awake to register any embarrassment over his little sigh of “Amy…”

She looked at him, obviously exhausted and her eyes slightly cloudy with painkillers. After the longest ten seconds of his life, Amy’s hand squeezed his ever so slightly, and she let out the quietest whisper of “Jake,” so faint he could hardly hear it, before drifting back asleep.

Jake was a selfish person, he knew that. But if there was one person in the world Jake would put that aside for, it was Amy. Jake would sit through a twelve-hour stake-out in a cramped car if it meant spending time with her. He would talk about emotions and feelings if that’s what she wanted. She could convince him to take time off work when no one else succeeded, made him eat a carrot for the first time in six years, and when she was in the hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, she could make him ignore Rosa’s demands to call the precinct as soon as Amy opened her eyes just so he could have her to himself for a little while. 

When her eyes stayed open six hours later and the doctors kicked him out of the room to do tests and vitals, Jake finally called Gina.

It took minutes for Gina, Charles, and Terry to crowd in the room. Jake had forgotten that, now that two of the precinct’s detectives were either hospitalized or verging on emotionally unstable, the workload had almost doubled. Some part of Jake did feel guilty for that fact, but there was no way his guilt could override the gaping need to be within ten metres of his goddamn soulmate when she was hardly able to open her eyes.

“Did she just wake up?” Charles asked, trying to peer through the window of the door. Amy was blocked by the nurse, however – Jake knew that because he had been unable to tear his eyes away from that window the second he was shoved out of the room.

“The doctors are checking her out now.” Jake said absently, ignoring the question. He really didn’t want to get into a speech about how he watched Amy’s heart rate jump when he took her hand twenty minutes earlier, alarming the nurses and sending a jolt of unmasked pride to his ego.

The nurses still only allowed one person in at a time, so Terry went first. Almost as soon as the door closed behind him, Charles was right in front of his face.

“You’re going to tell her, right?”

Jake sighed deeply. At least this was confirmation that the entire precinct knew about the sudden complications in his and Amy’s partnership.

“I suppose I have to, right?” Jake asked, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. “I mean, it’s not like everyone is going to be able to keep that big of a secret from her. And I want it to be me that tells her, not have her find out because you let it slip or something awful like that. I’m going to wait until she’s fully conscious, though. I don’t really want to overwhelm her right away.”

That entire plan flew out the window within the first half hour of the two of them in the room alone together.

“Shouldn’t you be going back to work?” Amy asked, her voice raspy as Holt and Gina finally departed, Gina giving Jake a significant look that Amy thankfully missed before closing the door.

“Holt gave me some time off.” Jake said, looking at the saline tube in Amy’s hand before comprehending what he said, “because you’re my partner!” He stammered, eyes wide. Amy’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion before she seemed to be simply too tired to figure out the implications of Jake’s statement.

“That was nice of him.” She murmured, drawing patterns of the back of the hand Jake had left on the bed. Jake was very glad it was not his heart rate projected onto the monitor, because it felt like it was leaping wildly by the simplest touch.

“I’m sorry!” He finally exploded, and Amy jumped. 

“What?”

“I’m sorry you got shot. I should have been there.”

“Jake, what could you have possibly done?” Amy said soothingly, as though it was her comforting him, which seemed very backwards as she was the one hospitalized.

“I could have, I dunno, shot him first? Jumped in front?” Jake said, mind trying to create scenarios and coming up mostly blank.

“It’s okay, Jake. You did your best. It was just some soft tissue that was damaged, nothing too bad.” She took his hand and squeezed it.

“Yeah, but it hurt so much!” Jake exclaimed before he could stop himself.

Amy rolled her eyes as well as she could in such a groggy state. “Jake, it’s no big deal. It wasn’t too bad.”

Jake shook his head, now totally unable to control what his mouth was saying. “No, Ames, you don’t have to lie. It felt so bad, I could hardly even move. I think I almost passed out, you don’t remember the pain because you were probably headed into shock. It was even worse than when you fell out that window, for gods’ sake!”

What followed was a ringing silence as Jake regretted everything he had ever said and Amy slowly pieced together what it all meant.

“Oh, Jake.” Amy said quietly. “How long?”

“Few years.” He mumbled, looking anywhere but her face.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Didn’t really want to believe it at first cause you weren’t, you know, interested or anything. Then you and Teddy started dating and everything hurt and it sucked.” Jake said quietly, absently stroking his thumb over her hand and watching the IV drip without really seeing anything. “So when you broke up it was my chance or whatever, but I didn’t want to scare you off or anything.”

A small hand, slightly clammy and cold, touched his cheek and turned his head so he faced Amy. “Jake, I really like you.” 

Jake’s heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest. “Seriously? Like, romantic stylez?” He asked wildly, fumbling over his words slightly.

Instead of answering, Amy just slid her hand to the back of his neck and pulled his head down until his lips were a hairs’ width from hers, their breaths mingling and Jake’s heart went from beating a million miles a minute to absolutely still. “Romantic stylez.” She whispered. 

Kissing Amy Santiago was like nothing Jake had ever experienced before. It was like it an out-of-body experience, with him watching the scene in disbelief, yet at the same time he could feel absolutely everything so intensely. Every place her body touched him felt like fire, and where her hands moved over his neck and lips pressed against his felt like it was crackling with electricity. He was unresponsive at first, and she pulled back slightly with wide eyes, looking vulnerable and confused. He hadn’t kissed her back. She thought he wasn’t interested. With that panicking thought, Jake wrapped his arm around her back while the other cradled Amy’s head, stopping her from falling back onto the bed, and smashed his lips onto hers.

The heart monitor was beeping wildly but Jake was too enthralled by the woman in his arms to take note of that fact and bloat his ego. All that existed in that moment was Amy and her fingers curling around his neck and hand gripping the front of his shirt. Her lips were soft and warm as her nose brushed his. His whole body was on fire and his abdomen was throbbing-

“Oh, my god, I’m hurting you.” Jake said, slowly lying her back on the bed and pulling up her shirt to see specs of blood on the bandage.

“I’m fine.”

“You literally cannot lie to me about how much pain you are in. It’s not possible.”

Amy’s eyebrows furrowed as she rubbed her bandage. “Do you feel all of it?”

Jake shrugged. “I feel whatever you feel. After you passed out I was basically okay.” Jake looked at the small patch of blood and contemplated calling the nurse. “Midol is, like, the best thing in the world, though.”

“I know!” Amy agreed, throwing up her hands slightly before her eyes widened. “That’s why you always came over. You were way better than Teddy at dealing with that.”

Jake shrugged, not really wanting to talk about his soulmates’ ex, but also way too proud of himself to let it go. He was very careful, using his skills as a detective as the reason he knew and not that he would wake up at three in the morning once or twice a month and sit, clutching his abdomen for half an hour until the pain receded enough for him to fall back asleep. The next evening, he would go over to Amy’s apartment with Cherry Garcia ice cream and The Notebook, and claim that he saw her box of tampons at work, or, when she had the day off, that he had a bad date the night before and wanted to remember that love isn’t dead or some half-assed excuse, despite the fact that Jake hadn’t been on a date since the Worst Date Ever. “Yeah, well, I’ll always be there for you, Ames.”

The smile she gave him in response made his heart skip a beat. They sat in silence for a long time, Jake simply embracing the fact that the girl of his dreams was holding his hand and giving him the impression that she wanted him, too.

That made Jake stop short. Amy’s brow furrowed in confusion at his sudden frozen state. Before she could open her mouth to ask what was wrong, Jake very nearly shouted in her ear before coming to his senses enough to lower his voice and back away slightly.

“Do you… do you, like, want to date me?”

Amy seemed to be trying very hard not to roll her eyes. “Of course, idiot. I would love to date you.”

“Oh. Okay. Great. That’s… totally awesome. The best. I love you.” Jake’s eyes widened and he looked stricken at the slightly surprised look on Amy’s face. He desperately wanted to take the words back, but he knew the damage was done. Instead, he closed his eyes and gripped her hand just a little tighter. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to say that quite so soon. You don’t have to, like, say it back right now or whatever. I’ve just had, like, five years to go through the whole falling-in-love process, so…” 

“Hey, Jake. Its okay. Really. This is a little too new for me to say it, but I will. Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Jake replied, slightly breathlessly. He had been preparing himself for rejection, and reassurance was more than he had ever dreamed for. Amy smiled at him, her eyes shining as she squeezed his hand. Jake could feel his own heart swell, and his entire body felt warm as he thought about a future where he didn’t have to feel that stupid little ache whenever she smiled at him, or get drunk when he saw people chatting her up at Shaw’s, or stare at their text thread, wondering if it would be overstepping his boundaries to text her after a hard day at work and ask how she was doing. Instead of Teddy picking her up after work, he could drive home with her. He could take her to movies and make her dinner and fall asleep beside her after they stayed up watching reruns of Friends and CSI.

Amy eventually drifted off to sleep, and Jake soon followed. He never let go of her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!!! I hope you liked this! I wasn't sure about posting it but i figured what the hell? c'est la vie? so anyway i may continue, this, may not. it will remain a one-shot for now. please leave those good good comments!!!


End file.
